I recently sat down with Gwyneth in her living room by the roaring fire. I asked her a few questions about how her background influenced her as a founder, what makes such a strong culture at Goop and what the future holds for the company.
Following on from our blog post this morning ‘Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop is the next true luxury brand’ here are some of the highlights from our conversation. You can also take a listen on our Lightspeed podcast here: http://www.tbtpodcast.com/gwyneth.
Nikki: Why did you first decide to start the Goop blog?
Gwyneth: I found myself at a crossroads after my film career, going all over the world and having my first daughter. I decided to take a pause and Goop was really culmination of these secret passions that I had for a long time — I love food, travel, wellness, exploration and I’m an inherently very curious person. I thought about ways I might aggregate my interests into once place.
Nikki: You have lived in many places, including my home town London. How have the places you’ve lived influenced your content at Goop?
Gwyneth: I’ve been lucky to live and work in multiple cities. I did an early film in Italy, France, Canada, different American cities and lived the bulk of my life in London. Being a child of the world and getting to experience different cultures, families, going into people’s homes and experiencing local food, has really made a big impact on how I see the world. When we stay insular and in our own countries, you kind of have one life, but when you venture out into the world, you can have many lives.
Nikki: You have a huge number of customers now. Who do you consider your core Goop customer?
Gwyneth: The core goop customer is a very curious, forward thinking person who is interested in information and new product that are coming down the pike. Someone who is looking for what’s next, a brave thinker, someone who wants autonomy over their health, and the quality of the relationships in their life they want non-toxic.
I think of the Goop customers as the next wave of thinkers and we are just trying to keep up with that consumer.
It’s been my role for a long time- I’m someone who tends to be an early adopter of things that sometimes turn out to be mainstream and sometimes turn out to be crazy.
Nikki: Now I know this may be akin to asking you to pick your favorite child 😉 but which are your favorite Goop products?
Gwyneth: You know we put so much time and care into making all of the product, but if there was one product I could not live without it would be the Goop instant facial.
Nikki: I have seen and felt the strong culture at Goop. Can you tell us how you thought about building your culture in the early days?
Gwyneth: You know I’m a very energetically motivated person. I always want to be around people who are smarter than me, more open minded than me. Culture is now something I spend a lot of time thinking about. I remember a mentor of mine told me, “Your culture is your business plan” — and it really stayed with me.
For all we’re trying to do, if people aren’t coming to work and feeling valued and inspired, and that their contribution is important, then it isn’t’going to work. So now I spend time contemplating how to enrich the culture — it is its own living breathing thing. We are 130 people now, and our internal culture is a microcosm of what we are trying to build out in the world
Nikki: What’s the most valuable piece of feedback you have received?
Gwyneth: I’ve had incredible mentors who have been critical in terms of advising me and helping me as I carve out this path. Brian Chesky told me early on “people will say you’re doing too many things, but I think you can do a thousand things a thousand times until they work” that was sort of his philosophy, a thousand things a thousand time… we aren’t doing a thousand things, but what I took that to mean is delineate clearly what you are trying to do, and understand how much work it is going to take to get there, until you can really start to to engage the customer. It was a piece of advice that really stayed with me.
Nikki: What makes you excited to wake up in the morning?
Gwyneth: So much makes me excited to wake up. What makes me most excited is thinking about the future and how to get there- creating strategy and trying to anticipate problems, trends, and trying to understand where we all might be in 18 months time. Is there going to be a recession? Should we start planning for that now. And on a positive note, culturally are people going to be more brave, more expressive and can we plan for that? I think about where ware going and how we are going to get there.
Nikki: Now the other side of the coin. What worries keep you up at night?
Gwyneth: I think that there are couple of things fundamentally that keep me up at night. One is, how do you achieve the kind of scale we are looking for and maintain quality and integrity and not thwart growth? It is a tricky balance.
We have grown slowly in the past because we have put so much care into not acquiring fake customers, not showing growth that doesn’t really count, not slinging product that we don’t really believe in, and if something is not right, going back to the drawing board. That is very much the values of the company and I think the way that you build a strong, heritage brand. On the partnership side, there are a lot of partnerships we cannot take because the values of that brand don’t align with ours so that limits a lot of our partnerships.
For example if you went to the Goop homepage and you saw an ad for a fast food chain, it would be brand diminishing. It’s hard to tell the women I work with “that’s a $2m RFP you can’t put out” you know? So that worries me. How do you meet or beat numbers when you’re trying to do something in a very careful, conscious way, staying authentic to who you are.
Nikki: What are 2 things you’d like to add to your life?
Gwyneth: An 8th day of the week! But it would have to be a weekend day. And a CMO!
Nikki: What are the non Goop brands that you can’t live without?
Gwyneth: Vinter’s daughter, an amazing serum in northern California that I can’t live without. And the great, classic brands like Chanel, and Levis.
Nikki: We have a lot of exciting Goop announcements to come this year. What can you tell people about the future of Goop?
Gwyneth: We have such an incredible opportunity ahead of us in terms of filling out the verticals with amazing product. I’m the most excited about our autonomous product creation, because we approach things in a very different way. I’m very excited about this Venn diagram of wellness and beauty and how they overlap. I think when we create something, we are looking to be disruptive in all ways. If you’re making an incredible baths soap, to also explore the homeopathic and mystical properties. So I’m very excited about the Goop product that we have coming.
Nikki: And now for a guest question from Fredric Court at Felix Capital…It is an incredibly tough journey to build a business and do all that you are doing, but you still get an amazing kick from what you are doing — what is the biggest joy that you’ve experienced thanks to goop?
Gwyneth: I honestly think my biggest joy is working with the team of people I work with. Every day I go into the office and I have this incredible team of mostly women, and I haven’t experienced anything like this before because I don’t come from the corporate world. These women, we’ve formed this sisterhood and we really have each other’s backs, we fill in the gaps for the other, we help one another, we uplift one another, and it has been an incredible unexpected blessing and I’m always so excited to go to work and see everybody.
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